Metaphorical inspirations

The term later migrated to art films and became the appellation for a pantheon of directors such as Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, Murnau, Welles, Mizoguchi, and many others. In its original usage, however, it was a term for Hollywood greats such as Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks and others. Godard even christened Henri Langlois, the maverick archivist of the Cinematheque Francais, as an auteur. Suffice it to say that auteur theory developed haphazardly and never yielded a programmatic manifesto.